The Northward Contrail

That's all there is

I'd dreaded this day, not just because I'd be going home, but also because I was worried about how I would handle it.  Three years ago, when it was time to say goodbye, I was distraught.  My friend and I still joke about how I was inconsolable at the thought of leaving, how I burst into tears as we drove around Anchorage that morning, and all that.

But this year, it didn't happen.  There's a reason, and I'll get to that in due course.  Anyway, I took my bath and packed my bags, made sure everything was accounted for, and waited for the day to begin.  There had been talk of a meet-up with my friend's wife at lunchtime, and I was hoping that would come to pass.

But then the phone rang about 8 a.m.  That wasn't good.  I could hear my friend having a rather detailed discussion about a technical problem. Yep, the real world had intruded.  My friend was not very happy about it, not only because he'd had plans for that day, but also because he was officially on vacation.  When he was done on the phone, he told me we'd be heading into Anchorage a little early because he had to go by the office and deal with this issue.

The lunch plans got scrapped, and instead we went by my friend's place of employment.  I took a seat in his office and minded my own beeswax while he went into the equipment room and installed some new tubes on the UNIVAC or whatever it was he had to do.  When that was done, we went to lunch at a really good Japanese restaurant.  I managed to use chopsticks without looking like a (total) klutz.  Your victories are where you can get them.

From there, we drove over to the airport.  But not to the terminal just yet; there was still some time.  Instead, we went to the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum by Lake Hood.  It's not the largest museum or the shiniest, but it's a great museum, not to be missed.  This doesn't begin to scratch the surface, but some pictures:

I used to watch these fly out of Anchorage.  One of my fondest memories is of a morning six years ago when we watched one of these (perhaps this very one) do a post-maintenance four-engine run-up not fifty yards from where we were. Now Northern Air Cargo's DC-6s are history.

Remains of the Douglas World Cruiser "Seattle."  Of obvious interest to anyone who has the old Williams Bros. kit.

I'm seriously thinking of putting this sign over my office door.

Lowell Thomas Jr.'s Helio Courier.  (You probably know of his dad, but Junior's led quite the life of his own.)

Just like a certain 747, not even a DC-6 can escape the tax man. 

The Mudhen.  One of Alaska Airlines' 737-200 Combi aircraft, outfitted with a gravel kit to let her operate from unimproved runways.  She carried cargo up front and people in the rear.  Years ago I had a chance to fly on one, but didn't take up the offer.  Now I wish I had.

You know you've been used a lot when your doublers have doublers.

One rescued PBY.  Just needs a little work.

A couple of Cessnas parked near the PBY.  It's impossible for me to describe the multiple layers of longing that scene makes me feel.  (No, I didn't take that picture thinking "Windows wallpaper for work computer."  Why do you ask such silly questions?)

Next door is Rust's Flying Service.  There's no shortage of interesting hardware there, but when we were walking around the outdoor exhibits, we heard this beast roaring along the adjacent taxiway.  And then we saw it.  The Otter sounds as evil as it looks with turbo power, but, oh, man, what an airplane. When I saw it parked there, I told my friend to stop for a moment because I was having a Moment Of Geek and needed to take a picture.

Unfortunately, soon it was time to head to the terminal.  We took one last look around.  There was an American 777 parked at the end of the International terminal, not something you see often in Anchorage.  We wondered what the story was.  (Later, we found out.)

But the time had come.  And I didn't cry.  Instead, my friend and I laughed, embraced, made jokes.  I told him defiantly, "Make sure this place don't go nowhere.  I'll be back real soon."  And I meant it. That's what made this time different: knowing Alaska is mine, any time I want it.  All I have to do is go online, book a ticket (which is surprisingly affordable), and it's mine.  Last time, I felt grief.  This time, I felt I'd conquered something.

Alaska used to make me cry with longing.  Now, it makes me go, "Hot diggety damn!  When do I get to do it again?"  (If I'm lucky, it'll be sooner than ever.  Stay tuned on that.)

Whoops

I love finding clips of when things go wrong in broadcasting.  (Maybe because I've been there/done that too.)  It's always interesting to find out how the voices and faces handle it when things go wrong.

One of the funniest, and creepiest, "whoops!" moments I've found is this, from a night in 1978 when part of a miniseries was shown out of sequence.  (I say "creepy" because it always scared me as a kid when a program was interrupted like that.)  Notice how Howard Reig handles the explanation, too.  This particular "oops" is a minor legend.

Then there's beloved Uncle Bob Schieffer having an "oops" moment, and hilarity ensues.  Notice, too, how Bill Gilliand does the time check with a bit of a smile in his voice.  (By the way, have you noticed that since the demise of the staff announcer, the world just isn't quite right any more?)

Of course, hands-down, this is my all-time favorite, as I've said on here before.  I would only hope that if something similar ever happened to me, I'd handle it with that kind of cool wit.

Enjoy.

For the underdog

Seventeen years ago today we lost Alan Kulwicki. 

I devoted some time last week to memories of the 1992 season, when I worked at the radio station and handled the racing broadcasts.  At the time, I didn't think anything special about him.  He was just one of those names like Allison, Waltrip, Petty, Earnhardt and the rest.  He was the guy whose car was in the Hooters poster we had hanging in the control room, with all the ladies gathered around a stock car.  And then, one day in April 1993, he was the guy whose obituary came like a punch to the gut.  It seemed only yesterday I was hearing his name as part of the weekly vocational background noise.  Now he's dead?

It wasn't until later, when I started to care about racing, that I came to understand why Alan Kulwicki mattered.  It's because he was a stubborn independent who worked his way to the top.  He risked everything he had (and, at one point, lost nearly everything) to move to the South and follow his vision.  He ran his rookie season with one secondhand Ford Thunderbird, against huge teams with multiple cars.  He finally got substantial sponsorship and started winning some races.  When that sponsorship ran out, and a sponsorship deal he thought he had sewn up fell through, he ran unsponsored until good results, and a set of circumstances, won him the backing of a restaurant chain.  

Some folks thought Kulwicki was odd.  Some were put off by his engineer's demeanor (which makes commercials like these all the more funny to watch, and not just because you get to see Rusty Wallace dressed as the Devil in one of them).  And others couldn't figure him out.  At least one big, famous team tried to hire him.  Kulwicki turned them down.  He wanted to follow his own stubborn vision.  And, by golly, in 1992 things went his way.  It came down to the last laps of the final race, but Alan Kulwicki, that stubborn independent, won the 1992 championship.

Back then, I didn't know all this.  But once I did know, it didn't take me long to realize what a story it was, and what an inspiration, too.  Anyone who's been an underdog, who's had to fight long odds, knows this.  Anyone who's been told "Oh, you're crazy!" when they've turned down what seems like a sure thing in favor of striking out and following their own vision.  Anyone who's been so determined to meet that vision that they carefully, methodically, quietly work toward that goal.  Even when you're told you must be insane, even when you really don't know if the resources will bear you through...you know the real nobility is in the effort.  And you also know that, when it works out, there are few things sweeter than having your vision come to life.  I've been accused of being stubborn, wrong-headed, misguided, chasing rainbows and all that other stuff...but I also know that I stuck with my vision.  And it worked out.  And I also know there's few things sweeter than that.

It's often said that one of Alan Kulwicki's favorite songs was "My Way."  To this very day, I can't hear it without thinking of him. 

A visit with Neil

A few years back I happened to be in Alabama.  Talladega was just over a little from my destination, so I made time to visit the museum next to the speedway.  It's well worth a visit if you're in the area.

There's a lot to see in the museum.  Some exhibits are more interesting than others.  Some exhibits are more intact than others.  And some are unexpectedly moving, especially on afternoons when the visitors are few and the exhibit halls are quiet, as they were the day I visited.

This is what remains of a Chevrolet Lumina stock car driven by Neil Bonnett at Talladega in 1993.  Neil had been out of action for a few years after a horrifying accident left him with head injuries.  He recovered, went on to a second career as a beloved member of the team in the broadcast booth.  But the fire was still there, so Richard Childress Racing put Neil in a car for a couple races in 1993.  (Childress employed Neil's best friend, Dale Earnhardt, so it isn't hard to see how it happened.) 

It was said when Bonnett took to the track in this car, after being away from racing for so long, his eyes welled up.  It was where he wanted to be, and he was in his element, and all at a track he knew well that was close to home.  Then this accident sent the car flying into the catch fence, tearing down part of it.  It looked horrible.  But Neil was soon out of the car, walking and talking, seemed to be just fine, and ended the day in the broadcast booth alongside his former television colleagues.

Neil Bonnett hoped to end his racing career on his own terms, and was going to drive a few races in 1994 with a different team.  But he was killed in a single-car crash at Daytona the following February.  Something went wrong and Neil was killed.  There are those who say that after his best buddy Neil was killed, Dale Earnhardt never really got over the loss.

What's left of Neil's Talladega car is in the Talladega museum.  It's mute testimony to the violence of a high-speed crash, and testimony to how these cars protected their occupants.  As you can see, there's only a rope line between you and the wreckage, and it beckons you for a closer look.

Get close enough and you can almost stick your head in the driver's side window opening.  It's an eerie feeling to look in there.  You know nobody was hurt in there, but you also know that its driver was taken from us a few months later.  It's almost like Neil's aura is still there, somehow.

Maybe you can understand why, when I looked in there, I whispered, "Hey there, Neil."

Here's your cues

The other day I reminisced about my days at the radio station working the auto racing broadcasts.  I also mentioned I'd saved most of my cue sheets from those days.  Well, I went through one of the many boxes of accumulated junk I have (oh, boy, will my estate have a huge bonfire someday when I'm gone and all the stuff I've saved for no reason gets disposed).  And I found one.

Here's the cue sheet for the 1992 Southern 500.  It's a typical cue sheet for the day, with the basic broadcast information on the front (satellite information, cues, emergency instructions, etc.).  On the back is an approximate rundown of the commercial breaks.  Which, of course, you could never count on as anything other than an approximation.  Almost never did the race go as scheduled (wrecks, delays, caution periods, etc.).  Sometimes, but not often, the spots would be run a little out of sequence, too -- not by much, but just enough to throw you off.  In this case, the 367 lap estimate didn't bear out because of weather.  Instead I had to sit by the board for a long time while NA$CAR decided what to do.  Sometimes, they'd fill if it looked like it was going to take a while, but other times they'd throw it back to the locals for a while and we'd go back at a given time for updates.  On one hand, it meant overtime pay for me, but on the other hand...I just wanted to get it over with.

Extensive instructions on the front instructed us on what to do if the satellite feed went kaput, and gave a lot of phone numbers for support purposes.  (I don't know if those numbers are still valid, but I've redacted them just to be safe.)  I remember worrying about what to do if it did.  Remember, I was the only one at the whole station when all this was going on.  I especially wondered what I'd do if we had to fall back on the 900-number option.  I had visions of that being the only option, and of the suits going into vapor-lock when the bill arrived.  

On the back, you can see where I rather sloppily checked off each spot as it aired.  You can also see an element of my "are we there yet?" mentality, with the notation "367 laps" at the top.  Down at the bottom, you can see what was more on my mind: my pencil calculations of how much I would make for the day's work.  My mind wasn't on car racing; my mind was on the video camera for which I was saving (because a friend and I was gonna make us some Important Movies). 

I found several others while looking through; not all of them, but several.  Among them, I found the cue sheet for that first race I did (the Watkins Glen race), the Pocono race where Davey Allison got hurt, and the following race at Talladega when Davey, still really beaten up, started the race.  Man, do I remember the pre-race show on that one: local favorite, lucky to still be alive, grunts through and gets in the car to start the race. 

I also found the cue sheet for the July 1992 Daytona race, which I remember for no other reason than that the station manager, who caught everything his kids got, was recovering from yet another illness that night but came in to work our broadcast of the Independence Day festivities at the local technical college.  I remember him in the production room, next door, editing again and again the music part of the show: Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" over and over.  (And over.  And over.)  And I worked the board that night as the show went on.  (That's right, kids...I worked the board as our station broadcast a fireworks display.  On radio.)

The '92 Southern 500, by the way, was one of three wins for Darrell Waltrip that year.  It would also be his last win.  See?  History, and I didn't care back then.  Grumble.

Random randomness

Last week was refreshing, but this week I'm back in the salt mine, and it's one of the crazy parts of the year, and things are starting to stack up a little.  So, in lieu of any Really Deep Thoughts today, some random Internet silliness I've enjoyed:

-- Looking for fine dining?  Try Hamm and Buble.

-- Titanic, as re-imagined by a certain entertainment megacorporation.

-- And because there's a place on the Interweb for everything, a website devoted to game show pilot episodes (industry lingo for the "proof-of-concept" shows done for networks or sponsors). 

From the dawn of television news

While looking around for something else, I found this, and I can hardly believe it: NBC coverage of the 1948 Presidential Election, as Part I and Part II.  Note, among other things, the partnership with Life Magazine for the coverage, which is basically radio with pictures.  (Reuven Frank writes memorably about 1948's coverage of the election in his wonderful book Out of Thin Air.)  For the television historian, this is nothing short of priceless.

Glass houses

I grew up surrounded by trucks.  Not just pickup trucks, but big trucks.  Our dad drove trucks as part of his work, so my brother and I were riding on 18 wheels from the time we were, as they say, knee-high to a grasshopper.  (If I had a dollar for every mile I spent in the cab of an R-600, I'd never have to work again.  Man, those were fun days.  And, yes, there's another Jim Rockford parallel with my life: a dad who drove trucks.) 

It was also the 1970s, the heyday of Smokey and the Bandit and Movin' On and Convoy (the song, and then the movie) and what not, when CB radio was the big thing and "10-4, good buddy!" and "What's your 20?" were commonplace.  It was everywhere: in the music, on television, in the toy stores (care to guess how many of these types of things my brother and I built?) and elsewhere.

So whenever there was something truck-themed on television, we'd watch.  Movin' On was a staple, and we liked it in our home.  (We never did warm up to B.J. and the Bear, I think because it was a bit silly and because it was a bit too pretty-boy for our tastes.  Though I think we did watch Sheriff Lobo when it became its own show.)

Back then, the trucking movie that was most widely seen was when ABC's prime-time movie series would show White Line Fever with Jan-Michael Vincent.  Back then, it seemed ABC would show it two or three times a year.  We'd watch.  But a couple scenes would terrify me as a kid.  One was when Slim Pickens would get killed.  But nothing could match the stark raving terror I'd feel when this scene played.  Now I can watch it and laugh, but back then, it scared me to death, and I'd have to turn my head and close my eyes.  Go figure.

And now, a word from Lou Crosby

For Christmas, one of the surprises I got from my parents was a two-DVD set of old television commercials.  One disc was nothing but automotive commercials, and in the middle of it was a great pair of production pieces from The Lawrence Welk Show, back when it was sponsored by Dodge.  One was a big song-and-dance number, with plenty of brass and cars on stage, for the Dodge "Power Giant" trucks -- "Giants of the Low-Priced Three."  There was also a live, outside-the-building commercial showing the trucks in action, too. All the while, there was this low tympani roll.  It was eleven shades of awesome.

The commercials were voiced by the deep, pleasant growl of Lou Crosby (for the '70s set, he was Cathy Lee Crosby's dad).  What a voice, right?  You don't get announcing like that anymore -- or, for that matter, live commercials as big production pieces.

While I can't find the "Power Giants" ads online, here's an example of a similar piece.  Dig that low, pleasant growl of Crosby's -- and that vintage Mopar iron, too.

And here's a little fancy footwork from Lou -- awful catchy!

Oh, mister...?

I was still a youngster a couple or three years or so into grade school when this commercial came out.  The concept of travel didn't grab me so much as the man in the conductor's uniform.  I didn't know who he was, but that completely over-the-top "nnnnyyyeeeesss!" thing fascinated me.  And, it turned out, it also fascinated a schoolmate who carpooled home with us.  Every afternoon in the back seat of the car, it would be like a comedy routine.  I must have annoyed my mother no end imitating the man I called "Mr. Passport."  (I didn't know enough to know he was dressed as a conductor.)

A couple years later, when I discovered Jack Benny, I came to find out this was the great Frank Nelson.  He put in appearances on all kinds of radio and television programs, and stayed active in television and voice-over work into the mid-1980s.  But he's well-remembered for his work with Jack Benny, as a guy who would show up in various places to torment our blue-eyed protagonist.  So it was a delight to discover him in another context I already loved.  (I've long felt like Jack Benny's world was much like my own, with its little defeats and put-downs.  It's why I've always loved that kind of humor, the kind with just a bit of an edge to it.)

Ever since I saw that commercial in 1981, I've been working on my own "nnnyyyeeesss?"  And, I have to say, I've pretty much figured it out.  Every once in a while, the stars align and I get a chance to use it, too.  It's a real hit in the classroom!

As an aside, here's a neat little essay by someone who worked with Frank Nelson in his later years.  (I hope that Frank, wherever he is now, looks down and realizes my imitation of him is done with love.  Although, if he likes, I'll donate whatever royalties to a charity of his choosing, of course.  That will happen as soon as I get royalties from my classes.)